Hi, On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 4:39 PM Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
It seems to me the arguments _for_ skimage2 are pretty good - it avoids any API breakage for current code, Hinsen or otherwise, with the tradeoff of having to use a somewhat ugly package import name.
Greg referred to the arguments against in the SKIP - which are:
""" Ultimately, the core developers felt that this approach could unnecessarily fragment the community, between those that continue using 0.19 and those that shift to 1.0.
Ultimately, the transition of downstream code to 1.0 would be equally painful as the proposed approach, but the pressure to make the switch would be decreased, as everyone installing ``scikit-image`` would still get the old version. """
That second paragraph worries me, because it seems to imply that you are contemplating an option that will cause a lot of code breakage, Hinsen and otherwise, specifically in order to force people to upgrade to the new API. Surely that will cause a serious breach of trust with your users? I bet they expect you to take their concerns very seriously when doing big shifts like this, whereas this looks as if you are putting heavy weight on the interests of the developers against the interests of the users. I mean, can't the users expect you to accept some reduction in speed of uptake, in order to defend them from this level of breakage?
To put this another way - if you do go for the breaking 1.0 strategy, I am sure that you will get lots of users on this list saying "All my code broke, and now I see it's a lot of work to fix, why did you do this?". I am sure you don't want to find yourselves in the position of having to say "We did it to force you to move onto our new API". Cheers, Matthew